robustly potted with a baluster body, rising from a stepped foot to a wide straight neck, the exterior deftly decorated in high relief enhanced by detailed carving, with scenes of ladies amongst elaborate interiors engaged in various literati pursuits, one depicting a lady holding a ruyi sceptre looking back at a female attendant carrying a qin, another with a lady and her attendant standing before a table laden with scroll paintings, the third with two seated ladies reading beside a standing attendant, and the last with two ladies engaged in a game of weiqi flanked by two attendants holding a fan and a covered vessel respectively, each scene masterfully divided by trees and leafy plantain issuing from rockwork forming a continuous painterly representation of the 'four accomplishments', all above slender upright lappets just above the foot and below a trellis border at the rim, covered overall in a thick celadon glaze of sea-green tone, pooling to a deeper tone at the recesses, save for the unglazed mouthrim and neatly trimmed wedge-shaped foot fired to burnt orange, the domed cover with a scalloped rim, similarly decorated in high relief with ten shaped roundels enclosing precious objects below a band of pendent ruyi heads, all divided by rows of raised floret bosses and surmounted by a Buddhist lion finial

Léon Wannieck, Paris.

The overall structure of the jar is preserved well, with several condition issues including a drilled hole on each side, probably where it was originally mounted, the finial of the cover has been broken and restored, a 2.5 by 1.5 cm shallow chip and an approx. 4 cm firing line to the underside of the cover, fine hairlines radiating from the base, more clearly visible at the interior, none longer than 7 cm. Other general surface wear.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Four Accomplishments of Scholarly Ladies
Regina Krahl

This covered jar is a showpiece of the breathtaking craftsmanship at the Longquan kilns in Zhejiang province in the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368); but more importantly, it is a remarkable histo♐rical document evidencing an aspect of Chinese society that we otherwise rarely see: the appreciation of cultured women. This set of jar and cover is unique in design and outstanding in execution.

The Longquan kilns, which in the Song dynasty (960-1279) had excelled in creating subtle, understated, mostly undecorated green-glazed vessels, in the Yuan dynasty had to fight against increasing comꩲpetition from the Jingdezhen kilns in neighbouring Jiangxi province with their vivid blue painted porcelains. Taste in this open, cosmopolitan period had moved away from the serene towards the exuberant, and as blue and white porcelain became ever more popular, other kilns had to become more inventive. The Longquan kilns answered this challenge by increasing the drama of their own products through ostentatious carved, moulded and applied decoration, often in high relief, a🌞nd sometimes left in the reddish-brown biscuit, so as to add another colour to the otherwise monochrome style.

In their topics and styles of decoration many Longquan wares of this period closely followed the contemporary development at the Jingdezhen kilns. Still the most admired among the spectacular blue and white porcelains of the Yuan dynasty are jars with figure designs produced for a clientele inland rather than for export. They mostly feature scenes from Yuan drama, often from the play Xixiang ji (Romance of the Western Chamber), which was compiled in the Yuan dynasty from earlier sources. An example is the jar from the Au Bak Ling collection, published in Ye Peilan, Yuandai ciqi [Porcelain of the Yuan dynasty], Beijing, 1998, pl. 62 B, and sold in these rooms, 5th November 1996, lot 740 (fig. 1). It d♊epicts the play’s main female protagonists, Lady Cui Yingying and her maid, in a garden setting. Longquan jars, where similar scenes w🐷ere carved in relief, are at least as rare as their blue and white counterparts (see the listing below).

The subject illustrated on the present jar is completely different and appears to be unique at this time and extremely rare at any period. The concept of Four Scholarly Accomplishments that define a cultured gentleman is credited to a ninth-century text on calligraphy, Fashu yaolu [Compendium of calligraphy] by Zhang Yanyuan. Qin, qi, shu, and hua indicated competence in performing on the qin zither, playing the weiqi (or go, ‘surrounding chequers’) board game, practising call🌄igraphy and being adept at painting. The mastery of these skills was a prerequisite for China’s literat🀅i elite, and gentlemen exercising these four activities are frequently depicted in the arts of China.

Although traditionally the realm of men in the upper echelons of society, women of similar social strata were not necessarily excluded from these occupations. Educated female circles existed in parallel to the many male literary groupings, albeit less in the limelight and probably on a much smaller scale. To be able to play an instrument had always been considered an asset for a woman; ladies playing board games are depicted in paintings at least since the Tang dynasty (618-907), whereby weiqi was considered less of a pastime than an exercise in strategic thinking (Richard M. Barnhart et al., Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, New Haven, 1997, p. 76); and from most dynasties we know literary and artistic women that had achieved recognition for their poetry, calligraphy or painting even in this patriarchal society. A famous female artist of the Yuan dynasty, for example, was Guan Daosheng (1262-1319), wife of Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), himself one of the leading Yuan painters, who was renowned as a painter, calligrapher and poet in her own right; see Barnhart, op.cit., pp. 189-90, wꩵhere one of her landscape paintings is illustrated, which she had dedicated to another lady.

In the arts of China, the motif of the Four Scholarly Accomplishments is frequently depicted in various media, but hardly ever with female protagonists; one exception besides the present piece is a blue and white jar from the Shanghai Museum, made about a century later, which shows the topic rather differently rendered. The jar was included in the exhibition Ming. Fifty Years that Changed China, The British Museum, London, 2014, catalogue pp. 156-7 and p. 193, fig. 165, where it was juxtaposed with a male counterpart from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, p. 194, fig. 167. That the motif entered the repertoire of potters both at Longquan and Jingdezhen underlines how deeplyꦡ literati women were admired.

No other Longquan jar with this topic is, however, recorded and no Longquan jar with a continuous figure scene appears to be preserved with a cover. Three such jars, but carved in less high relief, have been sold in our rooms. Two of them depict ladies with attendants in a garden setting, occupied with more traditional female pastimes such as the picking of flowers: one from the Russell Beverley collection, illustrated in John Ayers, ‘Some Characteristic Wares of the Yüan Dynasty’, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 29, 1954-55, pp. 69-86, pl. 36, fig. 7, was sold in our London rooms, 18th February 1947, lot 25; the other jar, of smaller size, from the collection of Mrs R. Collin Smith and later the Jingguantang collection, illustrated in Ye Peilan, Yuandai ciqi [Porcelain of the Yuan dynasty], Beijing, 1998, pl. 445 B, was sold in our London rooms, 7th February 1967, lot 76, and at Christie’s Hong Kong, in 1993,🍨 1994 and again 3rd November 1996, lot 540. The third jar, from the Su Lin An collection, also smaller and showing scenes from a Yuan play, was sold in these rooms, 31st October 1995, lot 310.

Similar figure designs are also known from taller jars with animal mask handles, see a piece from the Eumorfopoulos collection with a similar scene as the last jar, illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, pl. 16: 17; and another depicting the Eight Immortals, sold in these rooms, 29th April 1997, lot 512, and published in Ye Peilan, op.cit., pl. 445 A. Remains of a ewer with a figure design have been excavated at one of the most important Longquan kiln sites at Dayao, see Longquan Dayao Fengdongyan yaozhi chutu ciqi [Porcelains exc✅avated from the Fengdongyan kiln site at Dayao, Longquan], Beijing, 2009, pl. 166.

None of these pieces show the distinctive high-relief carving style and fine glossy glaze of the present piece, which is closer in style to a celadon jar in Germany, decorated with a garden scenery with fruiting and flower plants, a banana plant and rockwork, but without figures, included in the exhibition Feuergeburten. Frühe chinesische Keramik im mak.frankfurt, Museum für Ange🐭wa𝕴ndte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2002, cat. no. 211.

The cover of the present jar, with its combination of auspicious emblems and applied bosses indicating jewel-and-pearl encrustations, is totally matchless in design and admirably conveys an impression of opulence. Similar ornamentation of jewels enclosed by pearl boarders are often depicted in paintings embellishing the attire of Buddhist and Daoist deities; see, for example, the crown of a Daoist deity and the hair pieces of a female attendant in a twelfth/thirteenth-century scroll painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, included in the exhibition The World of Khubilai Khan. Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, The Metropolitan Mus🌼eum of Art, New York, 2010, catalogue fig. 162c.

One covered jar is recorded, probably decorated with a male version of the Four Scholarly Accomplishments, but rendered in a much simplified manner, each scene confined in a panel, lacking the lush garden scenery, and the cover carved in low relief with Chinese characters, with a lion knob that was left in the biscuit; the jar formerly in the J. Pierpont Morgan collection and later in the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, was sold in our London rooms, 25th March 1975, lot 239, and included in the inaugural exhibition Matsuoka Bijutsukan meihin zuroku/Selected Masterpieces of the Matsuoka Museum of Art, Matsuoka Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1975,ꦜ cat. no. 69.